How to track Selcom Pesa transactions automatically

Selcom Pesa already texts you every time money moves. PennyWise reads those messages on your phone and builds your spending record from them — no manual entry, no bank login, nothing leaves the device.

What PennyWise reads from your Selcom Pesa messages
SMS from Selcom Pesa
0426JXCX Confirmed. You have received TZS 175,000.00 from PERSON ONE - NMB (201XXXXXXXX) on 2025-04-26 11:50. Updated balance is TZS 175,000.00.
Read on your phone — nothing sent anywhere
+TSh175,000.00
Money in
Merchant
PERSON ONE
Reference
0426JXCX
Balance after
TSh175,000.00

A real Selcom Pesa message format, run through the same parser that ships in the app. Try it on your own message in the parser tool.

How it works

  1. Install PennyWise and grant SMS permission. That permission is the whole product — it is how the app sees your Selcom Pesa alerts.
  2. PennyWise scans the Selcom Pesa messages already on your phone and back-fills your transaction history in seconds.
  3. Every new Selcom Pesa alert is picked up as it arrives and categorised automatically. Budgets and spending trends update on their own.

Why not just use a bank-login app?

Apps that aggregate accounts ask for your net-banking or account credentials and hold your transaction history on their servers. PennyWise asks for neither. It has no account system, makes no network calls to read your money, and its full source is published under AGPL-3.0 so the claim is checkable rather than promised.

Common questions

Does PennyWise work with Selcom Pesa?

Yes. Selcom Pesa is one of 157 banks and payment services PennyWise recognises. Transaction alerts from Selcom Pesa are detected automatically and turned into categorised transactions in TZS.

Do I have to type my Selcom Pesa transactions in by hand?

No. PennyWise reads the transaction SMS Selcom Pesa already sends you and creates the entry itself — amount, merchant, date, account and running balance where the message includes it.

Does PennyWise need my Selcom Pesa net-banking login or password?

Never. PennyWise has no login to your bank and no connection to Selcom Pesa at all. It only reads the SMS already sitting on your phone, which is why it needs SMS permission and nothing else.

Is my Selcom Pesa transaction data sent anywhere?

No. Parsing runs entirely on your device. There is no server, no account and no analytics on your financial data, and the source code is public so this can be verified.

What if a message from Selcom Pesa is read incorrectly?

You can paste the message into the parser tool on this site to see exactly what PennyWise extracts, and report it in one click if it is wrong. Parser fixes ship in the next release.

Other banks PennyWise supports in Tanzania

7 supported in Tanzania — see them all.

PennyWise is a free, open-source (AGPL-3.0) expense tracker. Bank SMS are parsed entirely on your device — nothing is uploaded, and there is no account to create. Browse all supported banks.